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Monday, 2 September 2013

giant week

The Selfish Giant comes out at the end of the week. Here are some of the pictures and designs that didn't make it to the published book:

This is the story I was due to illustrate before I had to stop work for a few years. The giant looked very different back then! I still really like this design. Perhaps I can use him in the story I mentioned in the last post. Actually he looks a bit like the priest from the Loaf comics doesn't he?

Anyway, he didn't end up looking like that. He has a big beard in the version coming out. I was inspired by a photo I saw of the minimalist sculptor, Carl Andre, but I have been told he looks like all sorts of people, including me and my dad! The truth is one balding man with a big beard will tend to look a lot like another balding man with a big beard. When I saw the picture I thought, 'that's him, that's the Selfish Giant'. I deliberately didn't look at the Michael Foreman version I had in Primary School in the eighties. I didn't consider that I might have some deeply buried memory of what that character looked like!

This isn't the actual photo I saw but it perfectly demonstrates Carl Andre's magnificent beard!

The 1982 version, illustrated by Michael Foreman... I hadn't seen this since second year juniors. I think the teacher read it to us the day we learned how to work Big Trak, the programmable toy car ^-^

The first thing I drew when restarting the project was the Giant's gargoyle, a hommage to wonky eyed stone lions the world over. They are one of my favourite things. Perhaps I should make a story about them... with similar universe rules to Toy Story... Gargoyle Story!

Here is a picture of the long suffering giant getting buffeted about by the North Wind. I drew it from a different angle in the end but I still like this one.

And finally (also somewhat ironically) this is the last Selfish giant picture I drew before putting the whole project on the shelf for six years... I see that I had already ditched the smooth chinned version back then. Beards just are selfish... perhaps?